Jean Seberg is perhaps little known in this age of actress-celebrities like Jennifer "J.Lo" Lopez, or Madonna. Ms. Seberg was an artist of some note in the 1960s, but the FBI was more interested in her political sympathies. When she dared make contributions to the Black Panther defense fund, she earned the twisted ire of the FBI, which launched into a vicious media attack.

Swearingen reports the agency went ballistic when it suspected the actress of having an affair with a high-ranking Panther member. He later reported, in a sworn affidavit, that the racism of his fellow FBI workers was intense, and it compelled them to the unthinkable. "In the view of the Bureau," he later related,

Jean was giving aid and comfort to the enemy, the BPP ... The giving of her white body to a black man was an unbearable thought for many of the white agents. An agent was overheard to say, a few days after I arrived in Los Angeles from New York, "I wonder how she'd like to gobble up my dick while I shove my .38 up that black bastard's ass." [66]

The FBI contacted its media "friendlies" to issue gossip items about her. The Los Angeles Times printed the gossip, and Seberg, who, as the FBI knew, was emotionally unstable, went into a terrible emotional spiral. She was about six months pregnant when she attempted suicide by taking sleeping pills. This caused her to go into labor prematurely and the fetus died. The shattered woman attempted suicide annually around the time of the miscarriage, and finally succeeded in 1979. Her ex-husband, Romaine Gary, later took his own life.